The story of the statues at UVM

There's no mystery behind the missing statues, but they have had their trials

Mar. 1, 2013

One of three of the five pieces of Judith Brown's 'Lamentations' is seen at a University of Vermont storage facility in Colchester on Feb. 15. The statues have to be restored after decaying from exposure to the elements. Two of the five pieces have been restored and are on display near the Fleming Museum in Burlington. / GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS

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Free Press Staff Writer

If you’re really familiar with the University of Vermont campus, you know where to find all the outdoor sculptures. You also know which ones are missing — all four of them.

You might be tempted to call this the case of the missing statues, but that would be a stretch. There’s no mystery, because the whereabouts of all four are known. The statues just aren’t where they’re supposed to be.

Their absence is subtle.

A relative newcomer might stroll past the locust grove on the central campus, and the two elegantly berobed figures of grieving women, and see them as a complete picture. That’s sort of like hearing half an unfamiliar symphony and supposing it’s the whole thing. In fact, there are five distinct statues in sculptor Judith Brown’s Lamentations Group. For more than a decade they were all here together, an iconic assembly in rows of two and three, inclined to the west as if in mournful procession. By 2004 they were all gone, and several years passed before they started making their way back.

Or, the newcomer might walk past the front facade of the Old Mill building and not even notice the empty niche in the first story, directly below the tower. For more than a century, that niche held a bronze bust of John Purple Howard, one of UVM’s, and Burlington’s, most generous benefactors. The imposing, bearded figure has been gone for a couple of years. By year’s end it may be back in place, overlooking the UVM green.

Central to that green is a fountain that John Purple Howard donated back in the 1880s. Not long ago that fountain, too, was missing. That’s because it was being restored, a task that was completed in time for last spring’s commencement — the first phase of what might be called John Purple Howard’s comeback.

The missing bust and three Lamentation statues are all in storage, in a UVM warehouse, waiting to be reinstalled where they belong. For the weather-beaten Lamentations, which require a complete overhaul, the wait is going to be a long one.

Both Judith Brown and John Purple Howard left their marks on the campus. Then their sculptural presence disappeared, sort of, but they’re both slowly making their way back.

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A whirlwind statuary tour

UVM’s campus is not exactly a sculpture garden. The outdoor artworks can be counted on two hands.

They include the UVM Catamount, of course, a bronze rendering by scuptor Dennis Sparling of the university mascot, installed just south of Royall Tyler Theatre in 1998; The Tree of Knowledge, a welded metal sculpture by UVM professor Paul Aschenbach installed near the entrance of the Bailey Library in 1961; Kindred Spirits, two conical shapes of black steel by visiting artist George Smith, installed outside the Fleming Museum in 1991; and Primavera, a bronze abstraction by UVM alumnus Richard Erdman, outside Jeffords Hall. (The “Flying Diaper,” a hyperbolic parabaloid structure built on Redstone Campus by engineering students in the ’60s, is not officially part of UVM’s collection.)

Then there are the works on the UVM green — two statues (Ira Allen and Lafayette) and the fountain. They are the legacies of two major philanthropists, neither of whom attended UVM: Howard, who made a fortune as a New York hotelier in the mid-19th century; and James B. Wilbur, a wealthy Midwesterner who retired to Vermont, developed a consuming interest in UVM’s founder, Ira Allen, and became one of UVM’s biggest benefactors.

And then there are Lamentations in the grove. What follows is a brief account of what’s missing and how it disappeared:

The Lamentations Group

Judith Brown, a well-known metal sculptor who spent her summers in Reading and died in 1992, created the Lamentations Group with her associate, Jeffrey Sass, in 1989. The materials came from junkyards. Volkswagen beetles were one of Brown’s staples (headlight sockets became breasts), and Sass fashioned the flowing robes out of crushed oil tanks — but the five sculptures were never rust-proofed.

After Brown’s death in 1992, the sculptural group was given to UVM and installed in the grove, with ceremony, the following year. They became a campus fixture, but as the years passed they corroded and rusted. Holes appeared, and makeshift maintenance failed to halt the deterioration. By the summer of 2004, it was clear that they could not survive outdoors much longer, so they were removed.

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They were on display — indoors — at the Flynn Dog Gallery for a while. Ultimately UVM took them back, put them in storage, and faced up to the fact that they would have to be restored and galvanized if they were ever to go back in the grove. That was a time-consuming and expensive proposition — at one point, the cost was estimated at more than $100,000. UVM officials didn’t have the money to do them all at once, but they did know where to go for starters — back to Sass, who was still active as a metal sculptor and restorer in White River Junction.

Before the economy crashed and UVM began its recessionary belt-tightening, the university did come up with enough money to restore and galvanize two of the figures, at a cost of about $20,000 each. The first figure was put back in the grove in the summer of 2008, the second a year later. For several months, one of the figures was on display on the ground floor of the Davis Center, as UVM mounted a modest campaign to raise donations toward repair of the others — an effort that brought in a few hundred dollars.

UVM officials say they want to restore the remaining three — when the money becomes available. At 61, Sass says he’s still up to the task, although “I’m not get any younger.” He even has a stash of old VW pieces that he can use for the restorations when, and if, UVM comes calling.

John Purple Howard

Burlingtonian John Purple Howard (1814-1885) was the sort of fellow about whom it might be said, “See? Not everybody has to go to college to be successful!”

He did, however, have the advantage of being a member of a prominent entrepreneurial family. His father, John, ran a hotel that was an important social and civic center of Burlington during the first part of the 19th century. As a boy, John Purple worked for his father in the hotel, so when he headed off to New York City at age 15 to join an older brother in the hotel business, he already had some useful experience.

According to a 1982 paper by Levi and Sybil Smith, “The Howards of Burlington: A Nineteenth Century Family,” the two brothers managed to develop one of New York City’s most popular, most expensive hotels (The Irving House). John Purple Howard retired at age 38 with more than a half million dollars, eventually returning to Burlington as a gentleman philanthropist. In Burlington, his legacy included the Howard Opera House, much of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, and an ornamental fountain in City Hall Park.

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At UVM in the early 1880s, he provided $50,000 for a professorship in natural history; the ornamental fountain on the UVM green; and a statue of Lafayette, north of the fountain and just down the hill from Old Mill.

Not only that, Howard contributed $65,000 toward the reconstruction of Old Mill.

Howard apparently had a special fondness for Lafayette, and by extension for Old Mill. As a teenager, according to the Smiths’ account, he had been in the throng of spectators who watched Lafayette lay the cornerstone of the building in 1825.

The Old Mill reconstruction led to the controversial elimination of a dome in favor of the current tower.

“The old College dome is no more,” lamented the Free Press on May 18, 1882. “This morning the last vestige of the ancient landmark and surveyor’s beacon disappeared. Verily, the glory of the hill has departed.”

Howard was favored, nevertheless, by a bronze bust installed in a niche of the new Old Mill, a gift to UVM by the citizens of Burlington.

The hill survived, however ingloriously, and generations passed, and everyone learned to live without the dome.

Along came James Wilbur, in the 1920s, with his largess and his fondness for Ira Allen. His gifts to UVM included the Ira Allen Chapel, a scholarship fund, a wealth of historical materials, and of course, that statue of Ira Allen, which was installed in place of Lafayette. The statue of Howard’s hero was moved to the north end of the green, where it now stands inconspicuously off Colchester Avenue.

Howard’s bust had a good view of all this and presumably was not pleased. The bust suffered an even greater indignity in 1941, when it was pulled off its perch — possibly as part of a fraternity prank — and disappeared. It was later found, the Vermont Cynic reported, “abandoned and muddy, on a lawn at the southeast corner of Maple and Summit Streets.”

The bust was returned to the niche. A few years ago, the plinth on which it rests was found to be cracked, so the statue was removed and put in storage. UVM’s plan is to fortify the plinth and find a way to anchor the bust to the wall. The Howard bust could be back in place by year’s end.

Epilogue

So much for the missing statues. Two mysteries remain, however:

• Why was Howard’s middle name Purple? The Smiths puzzled over this but never found the answer.

• What happened to Lafayette’s walking stick? Photos of the original statue, before and after it was moved, show Lafayette’s right hand resting on a cane. The cane isn’t there any more. It has been gone for about a decade. Replacing it seems to be fairly low on the priority list.